Book W/ Hogwarts Coat of Arms and Corner Protectors

As a gift for a friend who is a huge Harry Potter fan, I purchased a used copy of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone for about $6.00. The dust jacket isn't needed, but you will need access to a 3D printer (check with your local public library if you don't own one or don't have a friend with one) and a few cans of spray paint.

The following steps will show you the three parts to the project. Total time (not counting letting the spray paint dry) was a little over an hour - an hour to print the plastic elements, a few minutes to protect the pages and paint the book and 3D printed elements, and a few more minutes to glue everything on.

I used a Printrbot Simple Metal -- total print time for the Hogwarts crest was about an hour. I resized it to about 80% of the size of the file found on Thingiverse.com

The corner protectors were designed by me in Tinkercad... nothing fancy.

You can download the Hogwarts Coat of Arms here: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:809733

You can download the corner protectors here: https://www.mediafire.com/?0ou6hou651joc2a

Painting the book isn't difficult, but it does take some prep work. Start by taking a large manilla envelope and inserting it over the pages. Push it as far to the spine as possible, and then use blue painter's tape to protect any areas of your book you wish to keep the paint from covering. I wanted to keep the red spine, but I wasn't a fan of the purple cover.

I used Krylon Multi-texture paint (brown) and coated both sides of the book. The paint has this nice scratchy feel to it and is close enough to leather to make me happy. You'll want to use some painter's tape on the inside of the front and back cover if you wish to be thorough and have the slight edge that goes around edge painted the same brown... otherwise it looks weird left as purple.

I painted the Hogwarts crest with an initial coat of black and let it dry. That was followed by a light coat of Krylon hammered bronze and then light hits of gold.

I used super-glue to attach the crest and the four corner protectors, but hot glue would likely have worked, too. Try out the different colors of the crest before attaching. I didn't like the hammered bronze and added some gold that made it look exactly as I desired.

My friend loved the book... and I'm quite proud of how it turned out. I hope you can make one just like it -- please post photos in the comments if you do!